As I begin to introduce you to my memoir, Desert Birthright, I want to go back a decade or so. At that time, I was a mother to three young children and a full time art teacher. I was working as as a teacher and mother, along with being a homebirth midwife.Needless to say, my life was full! I started writing a blog called, BirthChange.blogspot.com. for myself and my midwifery clients. Every week on Sunday, I’d sit down and write. This turned into many great discussions and I realized I really enjoyed writing for an audience. After doing this from 2007 to 2011, I began writing the birth stories down from my journals as a way to record the experiences I had as a midwife and as a story to hand down to my own children someday. To fit this in, I’d write as much as I could every summer while my kids played outside in our above ground pool. I could see them through my back office window and keep an eye on them as they entertained themselves and I’d fill my free time in the summers out of school with my own special writing project. Little did I know this would turn into a book! In 2016, we moved to Cedar City, Utah to be closer to the university where my husband still teaches, and so we would be closer to the university where my three growing children would most likely go to school. Plus, we had outgrown the narrow minded culture and politics of Toquerville, Utah.
Once we were in Cedar City, my world expanded in ways I couldn’t have imagined.